Perhaps presaged by Warren Ellis’swidely quoted musings on weekly comics magazines, Mark Millar has announced he’s teaming with Titan Books for CLiNT [sic], a new monthly comics magazine. Announced contributors include comedian Jonathan Ross, novelist Frankie Boyle, and journalist Steve O’Brien. and the mag will serialize Kick-Ass: Balls to the Wall the sequel to Kick-Ass. Planned for a September launch, CLiNT will be aimed at UK newsstands, but an audience in the US and comics shops is not out of the questions. Millar wrote on his forum:

I’ve formed a business with Titan here in the UK (who distribute pretty much every comic you can imagine to newsagents, Tesco, Asda and so on) and we’re going to produce a new monthly comic that’s aimed squarely at the mainstream. This isn’t aimed at comic stores (though I’m delighted if comic stores want to stock), but instead aimed at the huge potential of a UK mass market, the like of which hasn’t really been reached in a generation. Newsagents and supermarkets don’t really care about regular pros like me, instead looking for brand names like movie titles and television personalities. Hence the reason I’m launching this with the Kick-Ass sequel and people like Frankie Boyle and Jonathan Ross.

It’s going to be a massive venture and one aimed almost entirely at the UK. If people in the US want a copy that’s great, but this is being put together with casual British readers in mind, a combination of comic-books, interviews and features for 16-30 year old men. It’s obviously massively exciting and I’ve been secretly working on it for a little while with some people I’m very excited about. Some huge names coming down the pipe-line and the cream of UK journalist talent like Steve O’Brien on for features and interviews. All in all, very cool and I’ll talk about this in a little more detail closer to the time. But this is one of the reasons I’ve been spending a lot of time in London lately. I want to make this big, a cultural phenomenon and a showcase in parts for the UK talent I don’t feel has a wide platform anymore here.

“This is The Eagle for the 21st Century,” declares Millar, whose genre-busting Kick-Ass scooped the number one movie spot in America, and whose previous work includes Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. “I’ve worked on everything from Spider-Man comics to the Iron Man movie for Marvel in New York , but what really excites me is the gap I see in the UK market at the moment. There are absolutely no comic-books aimed at 16-30 year old guys and I think CLiNT has potential to make an enormous impact, bringing a new type of magazine to a new generation.

“I want this to be edgy and irreverent, the kind of thing guys will be passing around lunch-halls and common rooms, and there’s nobody I’d rather have creating new characters for CLiNT than Jonathan and Frankie. They’re both brilliant writers and will surprise a lot of people with this stuff. The last thing you’d expect from Jonathan, for example, is a vampire strip, but he pulls it off amazingly. People are going to love this.”

Although one might take exception to the idea that in the UK ” There are absolutely no comic-books aimed at 16-30 year old guys” — UNLESS YOU COUNT ALL THE ONES PUBLISHED BY MARVEL, DC, DARK HORSE, IMAGE, IDW AND SO ON — it is true that native Brit comics tend to aim at younger readers…except for 2000AD but…well, who’s counting.

While print magazines are about as lively as an oil-clogged turtle in general, the idea of a comics magazine is still an attractive one, especially with high profile (and talented) contributors. Sign us up, you crazy Scotsman, you!

Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.

Just about the comment towards the end of the post – of course those books from Marvel, DC, IDW, Dark Horse, etc. are available in the UK, through Amazon, bookstores and comics specialty shops, but this is a magazine aimed at monthly newsstand consumption, which is a totally different audience and shelf space.

It’s also going to be published in and for the UK, as opposed to being imported from the States with a UK barcode attached. So I think the distinctions are fair.

Apart from it trying to appeal to 16 to 30 year olds by using a juvenile joke title I wish it well. Actually, UK newsstands DO have comics aimed at that age group, in the form of 2000AD and Judge Dredd Megazine. I’m sure Mark must have heard of them.

Haven’t cared for Millar’s recent offerings but we’ll see. By reading this piece of news, the reader is lead to believe the following:

1. Mark Millar, Jonathan Ross, novelist Frankie Boyle, and journalist Steve O’Brien can write material that can apppeal to 16 to 30 year old men.

(Millar’s a definate maybe. I don’t think younger readers will pick up structural flaws in his writing or perhapas there won’t be any. The important thing will be how well 16-30 year olds are persuaded to buy this comic when they have so many options for entertainment.)

2.That this is part of a long-term project designed to create a hotspot for British comic creators.
(This would involve tapping new, young, and cheaper talent. One thing that may have contributed to 2000ad’s success is that they were able find fresh voices and were therefore able to stay relevant.) I get the uneasy feeling that this anthology will stick with industry veterans doing their best work or impressions of their best work. The problem with veterans is after a while they stop developing and just employ a formula over and over again. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the audience’s reception. Veterans are also more expensive which keep costs up.

In summary, the two main concerns are marketing, and costs. The two are interwi